"Once the Parkway venture took off and proved to be much more lucrative, they dropped the press," Viharo says.

Viharo joined the Parkway Speakeasy as a programmer and publicist. Once a month, he hosted Thrillville, an event that featured B movies, exploitation and science fiction films, as well as burlesque performances. The idea behind Thrillville was to promote "Love Stories."

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"The idea was to make me a local celebrity so my name cachet alone would sell the book," says Viharo, who has since published eight other books, five of which are part of the Valentine series.

Viharo still programs films as Thrillville for the New Parkway in Oakland. "Love Stories," though, eventually went out of print - but the book found an unlikely savior in actor Christian Slater, who discovered the book in a Los Angeles bookstore in 2001 and "immediately related to it."

Slater optioned the novel, adapted the book to a screenplay, and is slated to star in and direct the film adaptation. (The film is in development.)

The book is in print again, thanks to the pulp fiction press Gutter Books. Along with the reprint, the storyboard artist for the film adaptation drew the cover of the book, and Slater is now on the cover as Valentine.

"It's just one of those things, it's kismet. You put these books out, and they're like little notes in a bottle on a desert island somewhere, and they're drifting out to sea, and you never know who's going to pick them up," Viharo says.

"This one happened to be picked up by a movie star who wants to make a movie out of it."